Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson was the President of the United States during World War I. He was the only president to come from New Jersey, and was a college professor at Princeton University.

Wilson grew up in the South. In his early years he witnessed slavery and the reconstruction era.

Wilson was initially well-regarded by historians but his legacy has deteriorated in light of his horrific racism, that set the United States back by decades and inspired worldwide attacks on minorities. He segregated the federal bureaucracy and the military. He showed The Birth of a Nation, a movie that celebrated the Ku Klux Klan, as the first film to be screened in the White House. When approached by civil rights leaders, he dismissed them derisively.

Wilson threw thousands of people in jail for speaking out against American involvement in the war. Following the war, he pushed for multinational empires to be broken up in favor of smaller states with homogenous populations. His idea for the League of Nations was never ratified by the United States Senate. Wilson suffered a stroke and died shortly after World War I.